No Illusions

If you've seen all the Jacques Tati films I mentioned earlier, and you want more, then you pretty much have no choice but to watch The Illusionist. Although it is an animated film, made in 2010 by Sylvain Chomet (Triplets of Belleville), it is based on a Jacques Tati script. Best of all, it stars a M. Tatischeff - Jacques Tati's real name.

M. Tatischeff is a stage magician, working 1930s Paris music halls and getting shoved off the bill by an an anachronistic rock band. His search for bookings takes him to the far Hebrides, where he performs at a pub to celebrate the coming of electricity. There he meets a naive teenage girl who seems to believe that he can really do magic. Because he produced a pair of red shoes for her out of thin air (that he had bought for her as a surprise), she follows him to Edinburgh.

The animation for M. Tatischeff is remarkable - he is like the poster for Mon Oncle come to life. He moves with M. Hulot's gawky precision, leaning into a stiff bow or turning on his heel. His young charge is drawn with a simple gamin beauty - part elf, part Eskimo, all Scots.

And Edinburgh is rendered in loving detail, a handsome dirty complicated city, overlooked by castle and crags. It's a character in the same way the Studio Ghibli makes the surroundings into a character, like Tokyo in The Cat Returns.


So, a must for lovers of M. Hulot - BUT! I must warn you, the effect of this movie is very different from a M. Hulot story. M. Hulot is a bumbler and a fool, but always a happy one. M. Tatischeff is more wise, more world-weary. His face is older than even the latest M. Hulot. He is tired, he is failing and he knows it. The girl he has taken under his wing will be fine - she is young and beautiful. He may not be so lucky.

As a magician, of course M. Tatischeff has a rabbit. It is a terror, who bites everyone and refuses to get in the hat. Yet in a quiet moment, just before dawn, we find M. Tatischeff asleep with the rabbit on his chest - probably just for the warmth. And finally, at the end of his rope, M. Tatischeff takes the rabbit to the peak of one of the crags overlooking the city and releases him. Seeing this rabbit alone in the wild is perhaps the most heartbreaking moment of the movie.

Oh, that was a spoiler, I guess. The spoiler is that this movie may leave you sad and depressed, and not in a wistful, rueful, warm and melancholic way.

Tati wrote this script when he was at his peak - before Playtime bankrupted him and all of his backers. He dedicated it to his daughter - and there is a bit of a scandal about an illegitimate daughter he never recognized. But clearly, this is not about daughters, but about the public, who see Tati as a magician who can produce a pair of shoes, a dress, or a comedy out of thin air. He wants us to acknowledge the price he pays to produce the magic. And the price seems to him to be very high.

I'm sorry. M. Tati, I prefer the illusion.